Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “What’s happening?” asked Sancia.

  “The Candianos are mixing up their sachet procedures,” said the woman. “Totally redoing everything. So a lot of our clients are desperate.”

  “When are your clients ever not desperate?” asked Sancia.

  She smiled, but Claudia was always smiling a little. This mystified Sancia, since in her own estimation Claudia didn’t have much to smile about: scriving in such circumstances—hot, dark, and cramped—was not only uncomfortable, but also incredibly dangerous. Claudia’s fingers and forearms, for instance, were spotted with shiny, bubbly burn scars.

  But that was what the Scrappers had to do. To do their work in open environs would be to invite violence, if not death.

  Scriving was a difficult practice. Painting dozens and hundreds of sigillums upon objects, all carefully forming commands and logic that would reshape that object’s reality, required not only years of study but also a mind both calculating and creative. Lots of scrivers failed to secure employment at a merchant house campo, and many others washed out. And there’d been recent changes in the scriving culture that had made it suddenly quite difficult for a woman to find employment on the campos. Most merchant-house applicants who didn’t make it went to other Tevanni fealty states to do undignified, dull work out in the backwaters.

  But not all. Some moved to the Tevanni Commons and went independent: forging, adjusting, and stealing the designs of the four prime merchant houses.

  This wasn’t easy—but everyone had their contacts. Some were corrupt campo officials who could pass along the right designs and strings. Others were thieves like Sancia, who could steal merchant house instructions on how to make a sigil just right. But bit by bit, people had begun to share knowledge, until a small, nebulous group of dilettantes, ex-campo employees, and frustrated scrivers had built up a library of information in the Commons, and trade had flourished.

  That was how the Scrappers got started.

  If you needed a lock fixed, or a door reinforced, or a blade altered, or if you just wanted light or clean water, the Scrappers would sell you rigs that could do that—for a fee, of course. And that fee was usually pretty high. But it was the only way for a Commoner to get the tools and creature comforts reserved for the campos—though the quality was never totally reliable.

  This was not illegal—as there were no laws in the Commons, it couldn’t be. But it was also not illegal for the merchant houses to organize raids to kick down your door, destroy everything you’d made, and also maybe break your fingers or your face in the process.

  So you had to stay quiet. Stay underground. And keep moving.

  Clef said in Sancia’s ear as they walked through the messy workshop.

  said Sancia.

 

 

 

 

 

  Claudia led Sancia to the back of the room, where Giovanni, a veteran Scrapper, was seated before a small desk and was carefully painting sigils onto a wooden button. He glanced up from his work, ever so briefly. “Evening, San.” He smiled at her, his graying beard crinkling. He’d been a venerated scriver before he’d washed out of Morsini House, and the other Scrappers tended to defer to him. “How’d the goods hold up? You seem all in one piece.”

  “Somewhat.”

  “Somewhat what?”

  Sancia walked around and, with an air of quaint civility, moved his desk aside. Then she sat down in front of him and smiled into his face, her muddy eye squinting unpleasantly. “They somewhat worked. Right up until your goddamn sailing rig nearly fell apart, and dumped me over the waterfront bridge.”

  “It what?”

  “Yeah. If it were anyone else, Gio, anyone else, I’d gut you stern to crotch for what happened out there.”

  Giovanni blinked, then smiled. “Discount next time? Twenty percent?”

  “Fifty.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Fifty.”

  “Thirty?”

  “Fifty.”

  “All right, all right! Fifty it is…”

  “Good,” said Sancia. “Get stronger material for the parachute next time. And you overdid it on the flashbox.”

  Giovanni’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. Oh. So that’s what caused the waterfront fire?”

  “Too much magnesium in the box,” said Claudia. She tsked. “I told you so, Gio.”

  “Duly noted,” he said. “And…my apologies, dear Sancia. I shall correct the formulas accordingly for future rigs.” He moved his desk back and returned to the wooden button.

  Sancia watched. “So, what’s going on? Your customers need new sachets that quick?”

  “Yes,” said Claudia. “Apparently the Candiano campo is…an unusually promiscuous one.”

  “Promiscuous.”

  “Yes. There is, how shall I say, a strong appetite there for discreet arrangements.”

  “Ahh,” said Sancia, understanding. “Night ladies, then.”

  “And men,” added Giovanni.

  “Yes,” said Claudia. “Them too.”

  This was well-trodden ground for Sancia. Merchant-house walls were scrived so that the entrances only allowed in people with specific identifying markers called sachets—wooden buttons with scrived permissions on them. If you walked through the wrong door with the wrong sachet or no sachet at all, you’d get accosted by guards, or even killed by them; or, in some of the inner walls of the campos, where the richest, most protected people lived, rumor had it you could spontaneously explode.

  As someone who frequently needed illegitimate access to the campos, Sancia usually had to go to the Scrappers for forged sachets. But their biggest customers were undoubtedly prostitutes, who just wanted to go where the money was—though the Scrappers could usually only get you past the first wall or two. It was a lot harder to steal or forge the more elite credentials.

  “Why’d the Candianos change up their sachets?” she asked. “Did someone spook them?”

  “No idea,” said Claudia. “Rumor has it mad old Tribuno Candiano is finally about to pull up the eternal blanket and begin his final sleep.”

  Giovanni clucked his tongue. “The Conqueror himself, about to be conquered by old age. How tragic.”

  “Maybe it’s that,” said Claudia. “Elite deaths often cause some campo shuffling. If so, with everything in flux, there’s probably a lot of easy targets on the Candiano campo…If you were willing to take a side job, we’d pay.”

  “Not market rates,” said Giovanni pointedly. “But we’d pay.”

  “Not this time,” Sancia said. “I’ve got some pressing matters. I need you to look at something.”

  “Like I said,” Claudia told her, “we’ve got a rush job here.”

  “I don’t need you to copy the scrivings,” said Sancia. “And I’m not sure you can. I just need…advice.”

  Claudia and Giovanni exchanged a glance. “What do you mean, we can’t copy the scrivings?” asked Claudia.

  “And since when do you ever ask for advice?” asked Giovanni.

  said Clef in her ear.

  * * *

  “Neat,” said Claudia. She peered at Clef over the scrived lights, her pale eyes huge and enlarged by her magnifying goggles. “But also…very weird.”


  Giovanni looked over her shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Never, in all my days.”

  Claudia glanced sideways at Sancia. “You say it…talks to you?”

  “Yeah,” said Sancia.

  “And it’s not your…” She tapped the side of her head.

  “I think that’s why I can hear him—when I’m touching him, that is,” said Sancia. Besides Sark, Claudia and Giovanni were the only people who knew that Sancia was a scrived human. They’d had to know, since they were the ones who’d put her in touch with the black-market physiqueres. But she trusted them. Mostly because the Scrappers were just as hated and hunted by the merchant houses as she herself would be, if they ever found out what she was. If the Scrappers gave her up, she could give them up in turn.

  “What does it say?” asked Giovanni.

  “Mostly he asks what all of our swears mean. Have you ever heard of anything like this?”

  “I’ve seen scrived keys before,” said Claudia. “I tinkered with a few myself. Yet these etchings, these sigils…They’re totally unfamiliar to me.” She looked up at Giovanni. “Sieve?”

  Giovanni nodded. “Sieve.”

  “Huh?” said Sancia. She watched as Giovanni unrolled what appeared to be a largish sheet of leather. She saw it had buttons sewn into the corners, brass ones, with faint, complicated sigils on their faces. He picked up Clef as if the key were a small, dying bird, and gently placed him in the center of the leather.

  “Whatever this is…this isn’t going to hurt him, is it?” asked Sancia.

  Giovanni blinked at her through his spectacles. “Him? You’re suddenly sounding very attached to this object, San.”

  “That object is worth a whole harpering heap of money,” she said, feeling suddenly defensive about Clef.

  “One of Sark’s jobs?” asked Giovanni.

  Sancia said nothing.

  “Stoic little San,” he said. He began slowly folding up the leather around Clef. “Our grim, tiny specter of the night. One day I will get a smile out of you.”

  “What is this thing?” Sancia asked.

  “A scriving sieve,” said Claudia. “Place the object within it, and it’ll identify some—but usually not all—of the major sigils being used to shape the object’s nature.”

  “Why not all?” said Sancia.

  Giovanni laughed as he placed a thick plate of iron on top of the wrapped-up leather. “One of these days, San, I will teach you something about the tiers of scriving. It’s not one language, so it’s not like you can just translate each sigillum individually. Rather, each sigil is its own command—which calls up a whole string of other sigils on the nearby lexico—”

  “Yeah, I didn’t ask you to give me a degree in this stuff,” said Sancia.

  Giovanni paused, miffed. “One might imagine, Sancia, that you’d show more interest in the languages that power everything around y—”

  “One also might imagine my ass getting to bed at a reasonable time.”

  Grumbling, Giovanni grabbed a pinch of iron filings from a small cup and sprinkled them over the face of the plate. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got…”

  They sat there, watching.

  And watching. Nothing seemed to be happening.

  “Did you do it right?” asked Sancia.

  “Of course I damned well did it right!” snapped Giovanni.

  “So what should we be seeing?” asked Sancia.

  “The filings should be rearranging themselves into the shapes of the primary commands being used in the object,” said Claudia. “But—if we are to believe this—it’d imply there are none.”

  “Which, unless I’m mistaken,” said Giovanni, “is impossible…”

  Giovanni and Claudia looked at the iron plate for a while before turning to stare at each other, bewildered.

  “So, uh, right,” said Claudia. She cleared her throat, then knelt and began wiping the plate clean. “So…it seems like there are, somehow, no sigils or commands on Clef that our methods can identify. Like, none.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Sancia.

  “Meaning we don’t know what the hell it—or he, or whatever—really is,” said Giovanni. “His sigils are talking a language we don’t know, in other words.”

  “Would a merchant house be interested in this?” said Sancia.

  “Oh, holy monkeys, yes,” said Claudia. “If there’s a whole new scriving language out there, and they get ahold of it, they…they…” She trailed off. Then she looked at Giovanni, troubled.

  “What?” said Sancia.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Giovanni to her quietly.

  “What?” said Sancia. “Thinking what?”

  The two of them sat in silence, staring at each other and occasionally glancing at Sancia.

  “Thinking what?” she demanded.

  Claudia glanced nervously around the workshop. “Let’s…take this somewhere private.”

  * * *

  Sancia followed Claudia and Giovanni into the back office, stuffing Clef back down her jerkin as she did so. The back office was filled with tomes and books of sigil strings and scriving commands, reams and reams and reams of papers covered in symbols that made no sense to Sancia.

  She watched as Claudia shut the door behind them and locked it.

  said Clef.

 

  Giovanni pulled out a bottle of a potent, noxious cane wine, poured three glasses, and picked up two. “Drink?” he said, extending one to Sancia.

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes,” she said testily.

  “You never have fun, San. You deserve some. Especially now.”

  “Fun is a luxury. What I deserve is to know how big of a pot of shit I’m in.”

  “How long have you lived in Tevanne now?” asked Giovanni.

  “A bit over three years. Why?”

  “Mm…Well.” Giovanni tossed one glass back, then the other. “This will take some explaining, then.”

  Claudia took a seat behind a stack of tomes. “Ever heard of the Occidentals, Sancia?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” said Sancia. “The fairy giants. They built the ruins across the Durazzo, in the Daulo countries. Aqueducts and the like. Right?”

  “Hm. Kind of,” said Giovanni. “To put it plainly, they were the people who invented scriving, long, long, long ago. Though no one’s even sure if they really were people. Some say they were angels, or something a lot like angels. They were also called hierophants, and in most of the old stories they’re regarded as priests or monks or prophets. The first of them—the most notable of them—was Crasedes the Great. They weren’t giants, though. They just used their scriving to do some very, very big things.”

  “Like what?” asked Sancia.

  “Like move mountains,” said Claudia. “Carve out oceans. And annihilate cities, and build a massive, massive empire.”

  “Really?” said Sancia.

  “Yes,” said Giovanni. “One that makes the merchant house empire we’ve got today look like a piddling pile of shit.”

  “This was a long time ago, mind,” said Claudia. “A thousand years or so.”

  “What happened to this empire?” she asked.

  “It all fell apart,” said Claudia. “Nobody knows how, or why. But when it fell, it fell hard. Almost nothing survived. No one even knows the real name of the empire. We just call it the Occidental Empire because it was to the west. Like, everything to the west. The hierophants owned all of it.”

  “Supposedly Tevanne was just a backwater jungle port for this empire, ages and ages and ages ago,” said Giovanni, pouring himself another drink.

  Claudia frowned at him. “You’ve got work tonight, Gio.”

  He sniffed. �
�Makes my hands steadier.”

  “That’s not what the Morsinis said when they tossed you out on your ass.”

  “They misunderstood the nature of my genius,” he said airily. He slurped down cane wine. Claudia rolled her eyes. “Anyways. Apparently Tevanne was far-flung enough that when the Occidental Empire collapsed, and all the hierophants died out, it escaped the damage.”

  “And it just stuck around,” said Claudia. “Until about eighty years ago, when some Tevanni found a hidden cache of Occidental records in the cliffs east of here, detailing in vague terms the art of scriving.”

  “And that,” said Giovanni with a theatrical flourish, “is how the Tevanne of today was born!”

  There was a moment of silence as this sank in.

  “Wait…what?” said Sancia. “Really? You’re saying that what the merchant houses do today is based on some notes from some ancient, dead civilization?”

  “Not even good notes,” said Giovanni. “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

  “It boggles a whole hell of a lot more than that,” said Claudia. “Because the merchant houses today can do a lot of stuff with scriving—but they don’t hold a scrumming candle to what the hierophants could do. Like fly or make things float.”

  “Or walk on water,” said Giovanni.

  “Make a door in the sky,” said Claudia.

  “Crasedes the Great would point his magic wand…”—Giovanni mimed the action—“and—poof!—the seas themselves would part.”

  “They say Crasedes even kept a genie in a basket at his waist,” said Claudia. “He’d open it up and let it out and it’d build a castle for him, or tear down walls, or…You get the idea.”

  Suddenly Sancia recalled a passage from the note she’d found in the box with Clef: If Crasedes was in possession of some kind of invisible entity, perhaps it was but a rough prototype for this last and greatest iteration…

  “No one knows how the hierophants did what they did,” said Claudia. “But the merchant houses are desperately, desperately searching for ways to figure it out.”

  “To graduate from making scrived toilets,” said Giovanni, “to making tools and devices that can, say, smash mountains or drain the sea—maybe.”